


Layover

by Ericine



Category: Leverage
Genre: Airports, Canon Compliant, Could Be Canon, Drinking, Friendship, Gen, Identity Issues, Possible Romance, grifters, if you want it to be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 16:40:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6996157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ericine/pseuds/Ericine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sophie leaves the team to find herself, she knows just the person to call in for help. The conversation between Sophie and Tara that we don't see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Layover

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fooferah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fooferah/gifts).



> Request I'm filling for my birthday! Prompt: write about when Sophie asks Tara to keep an eye on the Leverage team while she's away

As soon as she finishes her (brilliantly dramatic, she has to admit) exit from the graveyard, she hails a cab and purchases outdated designer luggage from an outlet (she needs something that isn’t her but hey, she has _standards_ ).

She builds the character as she goes—a neutral palette, clean cut but easy to write off. Basics—a brown jersey boatneck dress, a charcoal overcoat, caramel heels. She paints her nails a darker and cooler shade of her own skin. Tasteful to a trained eye and unassuming to everyone else.

It’s not for them—she uses one of Hardison’s identities to board the flight to London because she needs for them to know where she’s going at least (at least at this point in her plan). It’s for her. She’s reached the point where being out of her own skin feels foreign to her. She doesn’t know what it’s like to feel at home in herself anymore, so she settles for something in-between.

She realizes, from somewhere behind the part of her that is telling her to _leave, go now_ before she does something very unseemly and the part of her making the cold observation that she has finally reached the point where helping Nate means crippling herself, crossing a line that she admits she’s been pushing back for longer than she meant to.

It’s not that he doesn’t care. He cares so much that it’s painful, but there’s a metaphor here about jumping down into a well to help someone, but that someone has to want to get out first.

She tries not to think about it too much. She’s operating off instinct right now, because she knows that she can always trust herself there.

When she clears airport security, the second call she makes (she borrows a stranger’s phone both times) is to break up (so to speak) with her landlord. Her apartment was in an area that was too quiet anyway. 

She falls asleep on the plane (it’s exhausting, but everything needs to be in place by the time Hardison wakes up, or things are going to get a lot harder for her, and she doesn’t want to do difficult, not right now when she’s sitting in coach and feeling a lot more like a shadow than something real), dreams of a funeral of hers where she’s stuck in the coffin and can’t get out, wakes up, and charms the flight attendants into bringing her Earl Grey for the remainder of the flight (she’s aware that their charity is coming more from a place of pity than admiration, but perhaps this fits this character as well, a sort of noir variant).

She needs to get a hold of herself. 

Lazily, Sophie steals a first-class pass to the airport lounge so she can freshen up, have more tea. She’s feeling more comfortable with this character now, so she ties her hair into two tiny braids (her hair’s so short that it’s more of a fashion _under_ statement than anything else). Then, she drops the boarding pass off where someone can easily find it and leaves for the airport bar (not the one in the airline lounge—that’s much too obvious).

Tara’s wearing a black wig out of caution, but she’s the first thing Sophie sees because she’s shaking her leg while she’s sitting (the woman never could sit still). Sophie breezes past the host, ordering a glass of wine as she walks. The host scrambles to put in the order as she takes the bar stool next to Tara, who’s sitting in front of a martini.

“We’re already on your home turf,” Tara says by way of greeting. “Did you have to make me wait on top of that?” She glances over at Sophie. “Wow, whatever it is, it really did a number on you. You good?”

Sophie shrugs. “I will be.” The bartender delivers her drink then, and she takes a long sip.

“I can take him down for you, whoever he is.”

Sophie chuckles. “Please.”

“I can take him down for you and let you beat the crap out of him.”

“Since when do you know I can fight?”

“You can’t, but you’re learning.” Tara shrugs. “It’s in the way you walk.” Sophie smiles. “What?” 

“You just reminded me of someone then, that's all."

Tara stares at her for a bit, blinks. “We can take him down together, if you want. Geez. I haven’t seen you this down since I met you.” She takes a short sip of her drink, letting the glass clank when she puts it down. “Ya know, it’s a little unsettling.”

“You owe me a favor.”

“I do. You callin’ it in?”

Sophie sips again, holds her glass with a loose wrist. “Yes, with a business proposition.”

“Now there’s something I wasn’t expecting.”

“I’ve been a part of a team for the past year or so—”

“—oh, believe me, I’ve heard. Not very subtle, are you all?”

“I want you to work with them. You’ll get paid your standard rate.”

“Yeah, sure, for how l—wait, where are you going?”

Sophie makes sure she’s looking over the top of her glass after she takes her next sip. “Personal business.” Tara rolls her eyes. “Oh, come now, it won’t be for that long.” She stretches her hand out in an arc in front of her. “Let me set the stage for you. Leader: Nathan Ford, goes by Nate. Ex-insurance agent turned thief.”

“And crew leader?” asks Tara, eyebrow raised. “No wonder you need a break.”

“In tow: Eliot Spencer, hitter and retrieval specialist; Alec Hardison, who goes by Hardison, hacker extraordinaire; and Parker, just Parker. Thief with a penchant for flying off of buildings.”

“The one who stole the diamond from Perth?”

“Yes, and more.”

Tara sighs. “I miss Australia. You were their grifter, I guess?” Sophie nods. “Alright, well, you’re building up to something, so you’d might as well just come out with it.”

“They’re all good people—well, good as our kind get. They’re completely trustworthy, but Nate’s a grieving alcoholic—“

“Son, right?” asks Tara. She shakes her head. “That’s the problem with good guys—they’re only good in name.”

“We work together as kind of a—" She pauses and reaches for a word that Tara's going to like. "—machine, a weapon, if you will,” says Sophie. “They’ll last a bit without me there, but—“ 

“But your boyfriend’s going to go wacko at some point.”

“It could get dangerous,” says Sophie. “When he goes too far, call me.”

“I’ve got a pretty flexible definition of ‘too far’." 

“I’m counting on it. But I can’t stay. I’ve got—“

Tara waves her hand. “Yeah, personal business, personal business. I understand me time more than anyone. You fix yourself. Make sure you’re well. Do you have some kind of files on these people?”

Sophie hands her a flash drive, one that she'd made a month ago when this idea had stopped bouncing around her mind and become more of a tangible possibility. “Everything you need to know is on there. Best to destroy it after, or do whatever you do you make sure no one gets their hands on that.”

“I’m insulted you had to tell me at all.”

“I care about these people, Tara.”

“I know. You bothered to call me to babysit all of them while you recover from whatever inner turmoil they put you through.”

“The turmoil’s all mine.” 

“That’s at least half false.” Tara’s eyes narrow. “You’re sure you don’t want me to beat anyone up for you? I could make it look like an accident.”

Sophie smiles weakly and shakes her head. “They’re going to work through this.”

“You sound very confident for someone dressed only in neutrals.”

“Ah, the better to blend in.”

Tara rolls her eyes again. “What else do I need to know?”

“They have—some more than others—certain emotional…struggles—”

“I’m not Team Mom. And no amount of money is going to make me that way. I know my strengths.”

“Then be the cool aunt, Tara,” laughs Sophie. “Let the mice play a little when the cat’s away. I’ll write a letter for you, explaining the situation, and you’re free to work the way you want to work, as long as it fits in with the team.”

“A letter?”

“Nate’s old-fashioned.”

“Try dinosaur. _Wow_.” Tara pauses and thinks, motioning for another drink. “I’ll have to test them first, you know.”

“They’ll pass. Do what you’d like, as long as you give them the letter, work with them, and call me when the time comes.” She produces the letter from her bag. “It’s all right here. I wrote it on the plane.”

“That’s creepy.”

“You would write out the way I worked and what to expect in two minutes if you had to, and that’s assuming you didn’t have a pen on you." 

“And they’re good.”

“The best.” The bartender brings over two drinks, and Sophie looks over, feigned surprise. Tara shrugs. _Take it. You deserve it_. “They couldn’t run a con like the two of us, but that’s different.”

“Alright, so I give it a week to sink in, another couple of weeks for them to feel your absence, and then slide right in.”

“However you’d like.”

“Lucrative gig.”

Sophie speaks slowly. “It’s not a bad opportunity.” Sophie raises her glass, and they toast. That’s as good as a handshake for either of them.

“I know you’ve got your own place and everything here. But I’ve got a room for a week if you wanted to come crash for a couple of nights.”

Sophie laughs a little. Under any other circumstances, she’d be insulted that she was coming off so needy, but it’s Tara, and she trusts her, and on a certain level, part of selling Tara the spot on the team was letting her see how dire things really are. (The truth can be just as much a con as a bold-faced lie, and this is one of the several things that’s bothering her at the moment.) “It’s really not necessary.” Tara nods and motions for the bill with one hand as she picks the pocket of a passerby with the other. “We could have just gotten him to give us the drinks.”

“Yeah, well, at least someone gets paid for it this way. Isn’t that what you’re into now? Kitten saving, that kind of thing? Besides, who actually has money to drink multiple cocktails at an airport?”

“Tell you what. Give me a couple of days to put some affairs in order, and you can come to mine. The penthouse with a view.”

“The one with room service?”

“Of course.” Sophie finishes off her drink with a flourish and is surprised to feel Tara’s hand on her shoulder.

“You’re going to figure this out, you know.”

“Of course I will,” says Sophie, but she reaches up to touch Tara’s hand anyway, which Tara immediately retracts. 

“Fly on your shoulder.”

Sophie laughs. “Of course it was. Just making sure you got it.” 

When Tara smiles back at her, a flashy pearly white beam, Sophie feels a flash of something familiar. It's only for a moment, and she's back to feeling unsettled and uncomfortable afterwards, but for that one moment, she feels like she's on her way back to herself.


End file.
